October 18, 2008

In which waah waah waaaahh

My tooth hurts. It's been hurting on and off for a couple of months.

It's one of the molars in my upper right maxilla. Probably the one the dentist told me was going to need a root canal sooner or later--apparently there was a filling that was too big for the tooth and the enamel was going to crack around it one of these days. I think one of these days has arrived.

It's getting worse. I was just having to chew on the left side of my mouth. Then I stopped being able to drink ice water (which I pretty much gave up after we moved to Portland anyway). Then I started having to drink my coffee in some funky slantwise fashion in an effort to keep the heat away from the tooth. Then it started hurting all on its own whenever it felt so inclined, and now it's pretty hard to think about anything other than ow ow ow oww.

And I seem to have a low-grade fever today, so of course in my ever-rational mind that means that matters have progressed from just plain hurty to ZOMG septic abscess leading to Certain Death!!! and I have to ask myself if it would be better to die of a horrible bacterial infection or to plunge my family deeper into debt by actually going and getting this taken care of and I'm kinda inclined to choose (a).

But I do have cranberry extract tablets. They work pretty damn well on UTIs; why wouldn't they work on infected teeth? Worth a shot, anyway.

(A side note: I have had problems with my teeth since, well, like forever. And it never fails to piss me off, because I'm like one of three people I know who actually flosses. As in, daily. Or twice daily. There seems to be a wee smidge of cosmic unfairness in here somewhere.)

So if I'm not around much, or if I'm crankier than usual, now you know why. Dental disaster uninsured stupid rotten tooth phooey.

I hate those. :( I actually let my fever back then go to 104F before I finally decided it was time to see the dentist. One root canal later the fever was gone... we had a big bill... but I was oh so much happier. ;)

I'll take the cranberry pills though. I'm still not over my UTI. *sigh*

What I've been told is that the cranberry extract pills work by changing the ph of your urine to inhibit bacteria growth. And who knows what kind of environment the little squigglies multiplying in your mouth prefer.

I join the chorus on this one. Another idea. Does OHSU have a dental school? Kids gotta learn somehwere....

Yeah I'm inclined to agree with the above posters. If it's progressed to fever time, it's time to break the bank and get the damn root canal. I should really take my own advice though. I've had a back left molar that they tell me EVERY time I go that needs to be rooted, canaled, and then capped, but I'm afraid of the money that will need to be paid for it. Right now my car needs repairs and my tooth hasn't reached the painful heights yours has attained.
Let us know how it went!

Yes, get to the dentist! It can go from painful to excruciating very quickly, and usually in the middle of the night. I went to the OHSU dental school for a root canal before I had dental insurance and got great care and they had a sliding scale. The work took longer than it does at the regular dentist, but the temporary root canal they put in lasted for years without any problems.

And, I know what you mean about the unfairness of tooth issues--I floss and brush quite religiously and have a mouthful of cavities and caps and root canals. My husband, who has been to the dentist one time in the entire 24 or so years that I've known him, never flosses and chews tobacco and had only one tiny cavity that they didn't even thing needed filling when he want a couple of years ago. Not fair!